Imagine a physician who takes the time to know patients and their families; who collects antique doctor’s bags and children’s books; who quotes Samuel Johnson, the 18th century writer, as readily as Sir William Osler, the father of modern medicine; who is equally versed in heart disease and the history of California.

Then imagine one more thing: This paragon makes house calls.

Obviously, we’re imagining someone from another era. For instance, Dr. John C. Carson.

Carson, who joined Scripps health system’s cardiology program 53 years ago, will retire as of Wednesday. Less than two weeks later, he will celebrate his 87th birthday.

“Not to be trite,” said Gary Fybel, chief executive at Scripps Memorial Hospital, “but I think this is the end of an era. Dr. Carson is truly an iconic figure and has been for half a century.”

He’s not coasting into retirement. His cellphone rings constantly, as patients, nurses, pharmacists and other physicians seek his counsel. He follows the latest medical developments, which he summons from memory with speed and clarity.

His knees are less nimble, though, after decades of jogging. These aching joints led Carson to the painful decision to retire.

“It’s now difficult to stand to see my patients,” he said. “How lucky I’ve been to be able to do what I love! I hate to leave it, but at least I’m getting out before they want me to leave.”

That day, colleagues say, would be far off.

“He really is one of a kind,” Fybel said. “My only regret is not spending more time with him.”

Dicey move

John Carson was born in Kansas, the sixth child and second son of a Wichita banker. As a youth, John breezed through school, causing his father to fret that the boy wasn’t being challenged.

So the banker brought home a handful of brochures from East Coast prep schools.

“You’re going to one of these,” he informed the boy. “Pick one.”

John selected The Taft School in Watertown, Conn. “That school,” he said, “meant everything to me.”

Taft, where the adolescent read widely, wrote frequently and learned to think independently, helped shape Carson. So did the U.S. Army. He enlisted early in 1945, as World War II was coming to its cataclysmic end, and while he never saw action he did receive some rudimentary medical training.

He mustered out on Halloween 1946. A few months later the ex-GI entered Yale, where he fell under the spell of Samuel Johnson and his literary contemporaries. Even during his subsequent studies at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Carson devoured poetry, novels, history.

“My education equipped me for a lifetime,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

His enthusiasm for books were shared by his father-in-law, a doctor whose daughter had been a Vassar undergraduate when she met a dashing Yalie from the Midwest. He remembers love at first sight; she recalls an on-and-off courtship of seven years.

“But John then was very much the same as he is now — a real character,” Elizabeth “Libby” Carter she said. “And so handsome.”

In their long marriage — they’ll celebrate their 60th anniversary on Valentine’s Day — she’s handled the finances (“I don’t think he ever balanced a checkbook in his life,” she said.) His first job took them back to the Midwest, where he was on the staff of the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Scripps tried to woo him away in 1960. The Carsons talked it over — the move, they agreed, seemed dicey.

“We were worried about raising our children in Southern California,” he said, “worried about it being a rootless society.”

They gambled and came west. Using his annual $12,000 salary, they made a down-payment on a $55,000 home in La Jolla.

They raised five successful and well-rooted children in the house, which they still own. “Turned out to be the best investment we ever made,” Carson said.

Direct line

On a recent morning, a 19th century pathologist went missing from the lobby of Scripps Memorial Hospital.

“I’m looking for Theobald Smith,” Carson said, scanning the shelves of a display case. “Do you see him?”

The case held a fraction of Carson’s medical medallions, metallic plaques and coins commemorating famous people, places and breakthroughs in the health sciences. While Smith is never located — maybe he’s among the memorabilia in Carson’s office? with the many collectibles in his home? — the exhibit still shines.

For years, Carson has exhibited portions of his collections in the hospital lobby. For years, Carson has exhibited portions of his collections in the hospital lobby. They could be texts, including a first edition of Osler’s 1892 classic, “The Principles and Practice of Medicine;” an 18th century apothecary chest, still holding its bottles; or a portable EKG machine from the 1940s.

As Carson continued seeking Smith, people flowing through the lobby stopped to say hello — and goodbye.

“Hey, I hear you are retiring,” a nurse said. “You sure have a history here!”

In fact, Carson joined Scripps before this hospital existed. His first offices were on La Jolla’s Prospect Street, in what was then the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation. He was an early staffer of Scripps’ Institute of Cardiopulmonary Diseases; and after the current hospital opened, spent a year as chief of staff.

Over the decades, his patients have included Frederick Higgins, who had been Ellen Browning Scripps’ chauffeur; philanthropist Harle Montgomery; animal advocate Margaret “Peggy” Howell; and, when his regular doctor was unavailable, James Copley, the late publisher of The San Diego Union and The Evening Tribune.

There are thousands more, some famous and others not. All received Carson’s direct line and the option of having their doctor meet them at their home.

“Sometimes,” he said, “as your patients get older, they need it. And if they know they can have it, I’ve found they never abuse it.”

Besides, Carson added, house calls are a useful tool for observant physicians.

“Walking inside someone’s home,” he said, “you can tell more about them in five minutes than you can in the office for an hour.

“This is how I get to know my patients and they get to know me.”

Cardiology is a high risk field, and Carson hasn’t been able to save all of his patients — or to comfort all the survivors. Like many physicians, he’s faced a few lawsuits. He’s always been vindicated, “but it’s still painful.

“I understand,” he added. “I remember when my own father died and a bill came in. I thought, ‘My God, a bill, and he didn’t live?’ ”

Up to L.A.

Carson belongs to an anthology of literary and book-collecting societies, and in 2005 served as president of Los Angeles’ Zamorano Club, a group of bibliophiles and manuscript hunters.

His specialties have run a broad gamut, from Samuel Johnson to Zane Grey, Sinclair Lewis to the children’s books of Dixie Willson (“Honey Bear”) and Peter Newell (“The Hole Book,” “The Slant Book”).

Many of his volumes have been donated to UC San Diego, where he was a Friends of the Library stalwart.

“He is a book collector par excellence,” said Lynda Claassen, director of special collections and archives at UC San Diego.

But he has always remained on call to his patients, even while motoring to gatherings of book lovers. Brian Schottlaender, UC San Diego’s head librarian and a fellow Zamorano member, commutes with Carson to the group’s monthly meetings.

“I swear,” Schottlaender said, “the dude is on the phone all the way to L.A. Either his patients call, another doctor calls, his nurse calls — it’s amazing. And he’s so solicitous.”

Why not? He’s having the time of his life.

“His patients are his best friends,” Elizabeth Carson said. “In today’s world, when a doctor is seeing 40 patients a day, you can’t do that any more.”